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It was wonderful to bump into Herbie at Portobello Rd market earlier this year & this time we organised to make this video for the blog (shot in June).
Herbie became virtually the (male) ‘face’ of Vivienne after his first appearance modelling in the Nostalgia of Mud/Buffalo Girls collection of 1982 & then the subsequent Punkature, Witches, Hypnos & Clint Eastwood collections. Continue reading →

This week we are happy to have a piece written by Neil about his passion & adventure in getting to see the Brintons/Westwood carpet dress.
To illustrate that they could make anything with carpet, in 1993 Brinton’s collaborated with Vivienne making some of her classic designs. In 1995 they collaborated again & produced the 1783 Brinton’s calendar (1783 is when Brintons first started their carpet business in Kidderminster).

Reposted from www.climaterevolution.com
For the past three years I have been trying to organise effective recycling within our company. I have found out, this seems to be a pretty impossible task to achieve.
Even though the general waste & the recycling bins are clearly marked & positioned around the studio, I constantly find unseparated waste in all of them. “Clean the food off of the plastic containers, don’t just trash it because you haven’t” merely falls on deaf ears.
I have sent in house e-mails & stuck notices around the building but 3 years down the line the problems are still the same.
The recycling bins outside where I live also continuously suffer the same complaints.
It seems that without some kind of reward or disciplinary treatment, people generally are not very interested in recycling; the proposed solution by local councils to this at the moment is to just burn all unrecycled waste in ‘Waste to Energy’ facilities.
But who is to blame? Where is the problem created in the first place?
Just look on the shelves of any supermarket. Packaging! Packaging! Packaging! Disposable plastic everywhere! – Why not prevent all this waste from being made in the first place?
I have done some research and came across the ‘Zero Waste’ philosophy which reminded me that when I was a child in the 60’s & 70’s most drinks came in glass bottles that had a refund paid on their return for re-use which we were always diligent to collect.
Also ‘Rag & Bone’ Men would come in a horse & cart around to the streets where we lived, ringing a bell. Anything we had to recycle was taken out to them & a fixed rate was paid back to us depending on what we had. Money being in short supply, everything possible was recycled (I have heard a saying that the best recyclers are either very poor or very rich).
“Zero waste” philosophy is to design environmentally friendly products, to reduce materials where and whenever possible; to use re-usable, reparable, more benign materials. Materials that that have a longer life cycle and that are not thrown aside and burnt after one time use and consumption.
Recycling – a word that carries a positive connotation – unfortunately is not the solution.
It uses a lot of energy which creates pollution in itself & it still does not deal with the bulk of our waste.
We need to stop making disposable goods!
Needless to say that without a public & political change we will see no improvements.
& Big business has to come to its senses!

There is an Upper House Election on the 10th July & an effort is being made to prevent current Prime minister Shinzo Abe & his Liberal Democratic Party (which has been in power since 1955) from having the two thirds majority it needs to pass changes to the constitution of Japan in their next term after the election (they always win).
Japan, generally known for the populations political apathy does has its own activists & Green Party though & we here at Westwood want to help them as a new war with China & Russia as promoted by the USA is definitely not in the interest of any of the peoples of the world.
Yohei Miyake is the man we are supporting. A Japanese Reggie musician this is the second time he is standing for election. The first time was as a Green Party candidate, this time it is as an independent.
Yohei’s style is to do open air speeches in public which he calls ‘Election Fests’. The one he did on the 25th June was in the center of Tokyo in Shibuya & thousands listened.

Yohei is trying to encourage young people to vote as, as in other places in the world, they generally do not even though it is their future that is being written now & it is they that will live the longest under any new changes (or maybe not if there is another war).
These are some of the issues Yohei is is campaigning for:
・Stop changing constitution
・Stop radioactive Japan, stop nuclear plant
・Create a society where you can be the way you are ( for instance,the main party just suggested the idea of changing the constitution to say that the priority is not people anymore but the country)
・Stop TPP
・Free education (from primary school to University)
・Stop destruction but renewable public work (stop building just for building sake, aim for green society)
・Organic revolution (encourage to make organic food)
・Stop killing animals (we haven’t got many shelters for animals like the UK does)
・Agricultural education

To support Yohei, Vivienne has sent him a message…

…& this was his reply:

“Thank you so much Vivienne,
I’ll do my best for make better world with my lovely mates.
Connect the world to make true peace treaty.
Art is the power in any field, in any kind of time.
Vote our planet.
Power to the people!